Solar Hill’s Solar Eclipse Gathering

August 20, 2017

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We are still out on Solar Hill at the Cayuse Ranch with Eddie, Aileen and Laura Glonek. Jesse & Kim Flores have been here the whole time. However, they are getting ready to head out soon. Thierry, Nicole and Ben Juliard were here when we arrived. They left about two weeks ago for San Diego. Matt Schaefer (Doug) was here this week. Marty and Dani Clinkaberry just got here. It has been enjoyable to off-grid RV with these people. All of these people are bringing their rigs out to Solar Hill for Eddie to either add solar or complete a checkup of the solar system.

We are going to be here for about another three weeks. Our first month was really about closing down our Wisconsin connections, getting everything to Solar Hill and working on making the rig/trailer what we wanted it to be. Eddie (Mobile Homestead Solar Services) is done with most of those major projects.

We are now switching gears to purchasing and learning how to use our astronomy equipment. The telescope on the left is our TeleVue NP101is refractor with a white light solar filter for visual observation. It is simply a neutral density filter making things extremely dark. It is great for seeing sunspots. The telescope on the right is a Coronado SolarMax II 60mm H-alpha double-stack solar telescope with a 15mm blocking filter. Those were a lot of words. However, this telescope is has two “narrow-band” filters that only allow the Hydrogen alpha wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum through. The double stacking of the filters allows us to discriminate down to nearly a half of an Angstrom. It allows you to view the activity on the “surface” of the Sun. Basically, you get to see flares and prominence (cool stuff). The third part of this setup is the Mallincam HD-10 camera with an outreach kit. It is basically a camera on one of the telescopes that is plugged into a large monitor for everyone to watch.

Our little community on Solar Hill will have about a dozen people watching the phenomena. We are about three hours from the path of totality. However, we will enjoy over 96% of the Sun being covered. Hopefully, we have good weather! Here are the views we will see on Solar Hill tomorrow with the different times.